Friday, June 17, 2011

A Return and Some Clarification

After an absence of a few days while I dealt with the last faculty meetings of the year, spending some well-deserved time with my family, and tinkering with the design of this page, I'm back to deal with what I promised you this blog would be about: my vision of computer literacy in the 21st century.

Now, in case I wasn't clear the first time, let me state again that I have nothing against courses in robotics and iPhone app programming. They're great courses for the kids who are interested in them - just as music theory and composition are great courses for the kids who are interested in them. But you don't drop chorus from the course listings just because "everyone already knows how to sing."

We have a generation of students coming up who don't know how to use the computer well for those everyday tasks that we've learned to take for granted, and we assume that we don't need to teach them those skills because we've seen what they can do in GarageBand.

I can't begin to tell you how many students have come back to thank me for teaching them the "mundane" computer skills that have made a huge difference in their academic and work lives.